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Healthy Calendar Diabetic Cooking: A Full Year of Delicious Menus and Easy RecipesMarietta, GA
Healthy Calendar Diabetic Cooking: A Full Year of Delicious Menus and Easy
Recipes
Lara Rondinelli, RD, LDN, CDE, and Chef Jennifer Bucko. Publisher:
American Diabetes Association, Alexandria, Virginia. Date of Publication:
2004. Price: $19.95
The world of diabetes is full of cookbooks. There are those that claim to save precious minutes in preparation and those that promise to take over the task of meal planning. Gimmicks abound, and too often the offerings are bland, tasteless, unimaginative attempts at making recipes healthy. Enter best friends Lara Rondinelli, RD, CDE, and Jennifer Bucko, chef and writer. Together they took the calendar, using the months, days, and weeks of the year as the basis for organizing menus, recipes, tips, and good advice for people with diabetes in an easy-to-follow format. The book contains 12 chapters, each representing a month of the year. All chapters contain at least 5 recipes for 4 weeks. For each of the 4 weeks, a practical weekly grocery list is provided, conveniently broken into categories of fresh produce, meat/poultry/fish, grains/bread/pasta, dairy and cheese, canned goods and sauces, frozen foods, staples/seasonings/baking needs, and miscellaneous. At the end of each chapter is a tempting dessert of the month. Each recipe gives the preparation time, number of servings, and serving sizes. The nutrition information reads like nutrition facts on a product label: calories, calories from fat, total tat, saturated fat, cholesterol, sodium, total carbohydrate, dietary fiber, sugars, and protein. Exchanges are also provided. Dotting every page are interesting and informative tips from the dietitian and/or tips from the chef. What makes this book unique? The answer is an uncomplicated but creative idea for meals and recipes. With this recipe book on hand, the cook need not ask, "What can I have for dinner tonight?" Pull out individual recipes or follow it through the seasons; results will not be the same old thing.
For the most part, the shopping list is a wonderful tool. But I would think
twice about buying a "bunch of basil" in January for the one
recipe that week that calls for " Most of the recipes come in at about 300 calories for an entrée. There are a few that reach 500 calories. For someone trying to lose weight, the Asian beef noodle salad, though delicious, might be too substantial for lunch and the sodium content certainly higher than usually recommended for 1 meal. Warnings are sometimes given if the dish is particularly high in a particular nutrient such as saturated fats. One of the book's best features is the way the recipes are matched to the seasons. Its directions for stirring up a hot pot of soup on a cold winter's evening in February or assembling a light noncook salad for a picnic or dinner on the porch in July should entice even the most resistant into the kitchen. It would be easy for educators, patients, or anyone interested in preparing tasty, healthier dishes to start with the current month, make a trip to the grocery story with the shopping list in hand, and return with the foundation for different nutritious meals for the week. This book is an excellent addition to any cook's library and one for educators to recommend to clients. Its easy preparation and creative meal planning might even induce the fast-food crowd to try their hands at preparing meals at home for the family.
The Diabetes Educator, Vol. 32, No. 1,
62-65 (2006)
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teaspoon chopped fresh
basil." This discrepancy made me wonder if the error was the shopping
list or the recipe itself. If beautiful 4-color pictures of food are important
in your choice of a cookbook, this book may disappoint you with its limited 6
pages of color. However, the cookbook is filled with more than 340 recipes,
with suggestions for a healthier lifestyle in and out of the kitchen.